Customer Reviews

Nature's Body

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Being this my first introduction into gender studies to say nothing of gender's role in the making of modern science, I was a bit worried I wouldn't completely grasp the concepts presented in the book. However, Schiebinger gives excellent examples and rational explanations on how who does science affects what is done in science.

Any student should be aware of the history of his or field of interest and how it affected its development. Schiebinger's books is an intriguing resource for any student of systematics, race, or biology in general for its account of 17th and 18th century science. In a world that is dictated so much by science, it also serves as an excellent reminder of why the scientific community should be ever so aware of how its members influences its results.

I read the original hardcover of 1993. It is some 170 regular text pages long and features additional 39 monochrome pictures and 55 pages of footnotes.

Londa Schiebinger's work isn't merely about the construction of genders as the title suggests, but to a great extent also about the intertwined construction of races. Which you won't find tackled together very often. She unravels the sexist - no less fascinating as sick as arbitrary - origins of taxonomy, still in use today. Her point is that scientists aren't free of the times they are living in, causing science concepts to build on whatever contemporary constructs, usually well beyond those constructs' expiration dates. For example, calling mammals "mammals" isn't as logical as it is usually taken for granted, but reflects the fashion of mind, when first imprinted on our collective memory.

Many jaw-dropping facts keep the reading interesting from beginning to end. (Apes as slaves in European mines, women admitted to the Académie des Sciences in Paris no sooner than 1979, menstruation blood once thought to turn wine sour, kill bees and drive dogs mad). One minor remark, though: As a specialist in the topic, she should have avoided the term "races" and related vocabulary, as none of those words resemble current - or 1993 - scientific knowledge.

You may be interested in related topics: The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) and Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex.

While the author provides a very readable book, it is of little real value beyond recounting a particular aspect of the history of science. The book is full of non-sequiturs, contradictions, and biased speculations that are insufficiently supported. Her reading of the historical record is skewed from the start, and it is evident that there is an agenda to push. What little evidence is offered is done quite selectively, with conclusions drawn that do not follow from what is presented. On the few occassions when the author does offer counterevidence, the result is a tacit denial of its import, resulting in speculations about what one person or another meant to imply. The history is correctly presented as non-linear, but the interpretation is decidedly linear. The agenda is clear, though largely unsupported.

If you are looking to confirm a pre-ordained ideology, then go ahead and read this book. If you want an unbiased account of the history of science in this area, find something else to read.